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Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction

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What does it mean to be human when you’re part of the machine?

Synners are synthesizers – not machines, but people. They take images from the brains of performers, and turn them into a form which can be packaged, sold and consumed. They don’t use the net, they are the net.
Everything is automated. Everything is synthetic.
But when the technology starts to fail, the terrifying question remains: what is a human?

Winner of the 1992 Arthur C. Clarke Award, Synners was Pat Cadigan’s early stories, and cemented her place in the core of the cyberpunk movement, and has even inspired academic works. Lauded for her complex characters and plots, and seen as a stalwart of feminist SF, Cadigan has gone on to win another Clarke and a Hugo for subsequent works.
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‘Racingly told, linguistically acute, simultaneously pell-mell and precise in its detailing’ – The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
‘Ambitious, brilliantly executed . . . Cadigan is a major talent’ – William Gibson
‘Pat Cadigan is the undisputed Queen of Cyberpunk’ – The Fantasy Hive

The world ended. People survived.

Per Hiero Desteen was a priest, a telepath-and a highly trained killer.

Five thousand years after the apocalyptic event known only as The Death, Hiero is tasked with finding the secrets of the old world, which could protect his civilisation from massing enemies.

The planet is not the same as it used to be. Mutations have changed the way humans and animals live together, the holocaust known as The Death. The Brotherhood of the Unclean wants to wipe out all traces of surviving human society, allowing anarchy to rule the wasteland that once was North America.


Hiero’s journey takes him into the heart of the Brotherhood’s territory. The danger is great if he is caught . . . but even the smallest chance that humanity could be saved is worth the risk.

This is the story of the world after it ended . . .
Five thousand years after the apocalyptic event known as The Death, Per Hiero Desteen – priest, telepath, assassin – has been working to find ancient information to save his people.
The Brotherhood of the Unclean, a roving band of feral raiders, stage an unprecedented attack. They manage to nullify Hiero’s telepathic powers, and leave him vulnerable and alone in the wasteland that once was North America.
Now he has to not only survive, but strike back and stop the Brotherhood before they can wipe the vestiges of civilisation from the face of the Earth . . . forever.
The sequel to the beloved novel Hiero’s Journey, The Unforsaken Hiero takes us back into a world that has been irrevocably changed by the hubris of mankind, and the new races that rose to live in it.

1981. A different Britain. When Norman Forrester of the Defence Ministry’s Experimental Institute effects a successful fertilisation of a female gorilla with human sperm, an infant is born. Gordon, known as Gor, is his son in two senses. But Gor’s parentage must remain a secret. He has no legal existence as an individual because his existence has never been divulged to the government data bank. In more than one way, Gor is a ‘non-person’.

Operated on so that he is capable of speech, Gor grows through boyhood and adolescence into a strong, intelligent youth. When he discovers his true identity, he is devastated by his outcast destiny. But is there the possibility of a home amongst some of the exiles from a computer-dominated class-oriented society? And if Gor can find them, will they accept him?

Maureen Duffy’s novel offers both an enthralling, fast-moving narrative and a vivid parable of the individual’s struggle to win acceptance from his fellows and to overcome the forces that seek to destroy human individuality in any age.

If your planet has been destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, your best friend turns out to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse (and not Guilford, as you’d thought), and you find yourself in the company of a two-headed man who also happens to be the president of the galaxy, and a beautiful girl you utterly failed to connect with at a party in a city that no longer exists … you probably shouldn’t be surprised to find yourself having breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe …

Welcome to a world where the Plantagenet kings survived, the laws of magic were discovered and the physical sciences never pursued. In the resulting Anglo-French Empire, a detective like Lord Darcy needs more than a keen mind and an observant eye. Luckily, Darcy can call on the aid of Master Sean O’Lochlainn, forensic sorcerer.

This omnibus contains all of the Lord Darcy stories as well as the only Lord Darcy novel, TOO MANY MAGICIANS, and has a new introduction by Michael Dirda.

The year is 2110. Humankind is entering a new golden age.

But when an amateur astronomer points his telescope at just the right corner of the night sky, he sees disaster hurtling toward Earth: a chunk of rock that could annihilate civilization.

While a few fanatics welcome the apocalyptic destruction as a sign from God, the greatest scientific minds of Earth desperately search for a way to avoid the inevitable. On board the starship Goliath, Captain Robert Singh and his crew must race against time to redirect the meteor from its deadly collision course.

Suddenly they find themselves on the most important mission in human history – a mission whose success may require the ultimate sacrifice.

Colonists from the entire solar system converge on the mother planet for the 2276 celebrations.

Among the influx of humanity is Duncan Makenzie, scientist-administrator from the underground colony of Titan, one of the outer moons of Saturn. Makenzie is not just on Earth for the celebrations, though; he has a delicate mission to perform – for his world, his family and himself . . .

Seven years after the day of the bombs, Point Reyes was luckier than most places. Its people were reasonably normal – except for the girl with her twin brother growing inside her, and talking to her. Their barter economy was working. Their resident genius could fix almost anything that broke down. But they didn’t know they were harbouring the one man who almost everyone left alive wanted killed…

While on a boating holiday, Scott Carey is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray. A few weeks later, following a series of medical examinations, he can no longer deny the extraordinary truth. Not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was. Scott Carey has begun to shrink.

Richard Matheson’s novel follows through its premise with remorseless logic, with Carey first attempting to continue some kind of normal life and later having left human contact behind, having to survive in a world where insects and spiders are giant adversaries. And even that is only a stage on his journey into the unknown.

A cynical and compelling tale of politics, exploitation and colonisation on another planet

The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries.

Subtitled, with savage irony, ‘The Making of a Utopia’, JEM is one of Frederik Pohl’s most powerful novels.

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business.

And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

For a decade Alice Sheldon produced an extraordinary body of work under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr, until her identity was exposed in 1977. HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER presents the finest of these stories and contains the NEBULA AWARD-winning LOVE IS THE PLAN THE PLAN IS DEATH; HUGO AWARD-winning novella THE GIRL WHO WAS PLUGGED IN; HOUSTON, HOUSTON, DO YOU READ? – winner of both the HUGO and NEBULA – and of course the story for which she is best known: THE WOMEN MEN DON’T SEE.

This is a true masterwork – an overview of one of SF’s true greats at the very height of her powers.

Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez S.J., is a part of a four man scientific commission to the planet Lithia, there to study a harmonious society of aliens living on a planets which is a biologist’s paradise. He soon finds himself troubled: how can these perfect beings, living in an apparent Eden, have no conception of sin or God? If such a sinless Eden has been created apart from God, then who is responsible?

Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1959.

The sword Tyrfing has been broken to prevent it striking at the roots of Yggdrasil, the great tree that binds earth, heaven and hell together … But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves, who are heavily involved in their war against the trolls, and only Skafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade the mighty ice-giant, Bolverk, to make the sword Thor broke whole again. But things are never easy, and along the way Skafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling, who took his place in the world of men.

A superb dark fantasy of the highest, and most Norse, order. THE BROKEN SWORD is a fantasy masterpiece.

Deep within the wildwood lies a place of myth and mystery, from which few return, and of those few, none remain unchanged.

Ryhope Wood may look like a three-mile-square fenced-in wood in rural Herefordshire on the outside, but inside, it is a primeval, intricate labyrinth of trees, impossibly huge, unforgettable … and stronger than time itself.

Stephen Huxley has already lost his father to the mysteries of Ryhope Wood. On his return from the Second World War, he finds his brother, Christopher, is also in thrall to the mysterious wood, wherein lies a realm where mythic archetypes grow flesh and blood, where love and beauty haunt your dreams, and in promises of freedom lies the sanctuary of insanity …

Readers love Mythago Wood:

‘6.0 stars. This book is a MASTERPIECE and will likely be on my list of “All Time Favourite” novels before too long’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Blimey, what a book! Genuine classic of mythological fiction.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘An imaginative masterpiece has broken the boundaries of fantasy genre. In Mythagowood Myths manifest from characters’s unfathomable desires. The mysterious forest which the protagonists are obsessed with is an original concept of legends, it rooted in subconscious mind arouses overwhelming power of human minds’. Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘To attempt to write a straightforward synopsis of Mythago Wood itself is almost to lose the very essence of the novel, to break away from the ethereal feeling which transcends the book.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘I’ve seldomly read a book that is so rich and enthralling in its descriptions and really draws me into the mythical woods, where time flows differently, where your subconscious can conjure up archetypes and these can infringe upon your very real life outside of the forest.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Edgewood is many houses, all put inside each other, or across each other. It’s filled with and surrounded by mystery and enchantment: the further in you go, the bigger it gets.

Smoky Barnable, who has fallen in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, comes to Edgewood, her family home, where he finds himself drawn into a world of magical strangeness.

Crowley’s work has a special alchemy – mixing the world we know with an imagined world which seems more true and real. Winner of the WORLD FANTASY AWARD, LITTLE, BIG is eloquent, sensual, funny and unforgettable, a true Fantasy Masterwork.

Winner of the WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL, 1982.

The Prince of Ombria is dying, and already his sinister great-aunt is plotting to seize power. The Black Pearl is feared throughout the land, and the city folk know her reign will be a terrible one. Only the prince’s son can stop her from seizing the throne but he’s just a boy – barely worth the trouble of doing away with.

Ombria, it seems, is doomed. And yet, beneath the streets, in a buried world of shadows and ghosts, a mysterious sorceress is weaving new spells, watched over by a girl sculpted entirely from wax …

Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field – and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, the Nebula Award-winning ‘The Day Before the Revolution’, and the Hugo-nominated ‘Winter’s King’, which gave readers their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.

A long, long time from now, in the valleys of what will no longer be called Northern California, might be going to have lived a people called the Kesh.

But Always Coming Home is not the story of the Kesh. Rather it is the stories of the Kesh – stories, poems, songs, recipes – Always Coming Home is no less than an anthropological account of a community that does not yet exist, a tour de force of imaginative fiction by one of modern literature’s great voices.

There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st-century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes … all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.

Moving, sensory, impressionistic, as jagged as the times it portrays, this book is a real mind stretcher – and yet beautifully orchestrated to give a vivid picture of the whole.

Mesklin is a vast, inhospitable, disc-shaped planet, so cold that its oceans are liquid methane and its snows are frozen ammonia. It is a world spinning dizzyingly, a world where gravity can be a crushing 700 times greater than Earth’s, a world too hostile for human explorers.

But the planet holds secrets of inestimable value, and an unmanned probe that has crashed close to one of its poles must be recovered. Only the Mesklinites, the small creatures so bizarrely adapted to their harsh environment, can help.

And so Barlennan, the resourceful and courageous captain of the Mesklinite ship Bree, sets out on an heroic and appalling journey into the terrible unknown. For him and his people, the prize to be gained is as great as that for mankind…

Hal Clement’s MISSION OF GRAVITY is universally regarded as one of the most important and best loved novels in the genre. The remarkable and sympathetic depiction of an alien species and the plausible and scientifically based realisation of the strange world they inhabit make it a major landmark in the history of hard SF.

A magnificent reworking of the Sleeping Beauty story by a master storyteller

On her 16th birthday, the princess Beauty sidesteps the sleeping curse placed upon her by her wicked aunt, the fairy Carabosse – only to be kidnapped by visitors from another time and place, far from the picturesque castle in 14th-century England.

She is taken to the world of the future, a savage society where, even amongst the teeming billions, she is utterly alone. And as she travels magically to places both imaginary and real, Beauty eventually comes to understand her special place in humanity’s destiny.

Captivating, uncompromising and unforgettable, BEAUTY will carve its own unique place in the hearts and minds of readers.

Anton is an undercover operative from future Earth, who travels to an alien world whose culture has not progressed beyond the Middle Ages. Although in possession of far more advanced knowledge than the society around him, he is forbidden to interfere with the natural progress of history. His place is to observe rather than interfere – but can he remain aloof in the face of so much cruelty and injustice …?